Internet card fraudster jailed for 3 years 7 months

article found here : http://blog.wwpa.com/post/2015/05/23/in ... onths.aspx

A fraudster was jailed for 3 years and 7 months at The Old Bailey on 13 March 2015 after he used stolen bank card data bought from a card fraud website.

Derek Akpabio, 50, of Thornton Heath, Surrey, purchased compromised debit and credit card details from a now disbanded card fraud website called Mattfeuter. Following investigations with the affected banks, more than 50 of the cards were found to have been used to make over £11,000 worth of fraudulent purchases.

The card ‘dump site’ Mattfeuter, based in Vietnam, was broken up following an international police operation in 2013. An email address recovered from the website’s customer database by the FBI and passed to the UK authorities was found to be linked solely to Akpabio. Analysis of the email account revealed that it contained 504 compromised card details purchased from the site. An additional 27 card numbers were recovered from a computer seized from Akpabio’s home address. The compromised cards originated from the UK, along with Australia, China, Singapore and Canada.

Investigations by the Dedicated Card and Payment Crime Unit - the police unit sponsored by the banking industry and made up of bank investigators, support staff from FFA UK and officers from the City of London Police and the Metropolitan Police Service – found that 56 of the cards had been used to make fraudulent transactions worth £11,180.

Further analysis by DCPCU officers of Akpabio’s email account also showed that it was linked to a series of PayPal accounts under different names which had been used to make fraudulent purchases. The registered addresses of the accounts included Akpaibo’s former home address, along with two nearby addresses. Material relating to fraudulent transactions was also recovered from Akpabio’s mobile phone and computers. These additional fraudulent purchases were worth £1,900.

Detective Constable Aine Matthews, who led the investigation for the DCPCU, said: “Akpabio tried to use the anonymity of the internet for his fraudulent purposes. Today’s sentence is a clear warning to others considering a similar path that you cannot hide behind a computer screen – you will be caught and punished.”

Akpabio was a given a prison sentence of 3 years and 7 months and ordered to pay £11,600 in compensation.

Established in April 2002, the DCPCU has since achieved an estimated £470 million in savings from reduced fraud activity – equating to around £800,000 per week.



Source: Financial Fraud Action UK 13 March 2015
http://www.financialfraudaction.org.uk/ ... 875&page=1